Wood Goes North on Clarks Hill
Miller wins on co-angler side
Boater Adam Wood of Springfield, Georgia, caught five bass weighing 21 pounds, 3 ounces, Saturday to win the 2018 T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League (BFL) South Carolina Division event at Clarks Hill Lake. For his victory, Wood earned $4,550.
“I didn’t know where I was going the morning of the tournament, but I was boat number 38 and after I watched the first 37 boats leave takeoff and head south I decided to go north for a peaceful day on the water, and I ended up whacking them,” says Wood, who earned his first career win in BFL competition. “I spent the entire day fishing the north end of the lake, around Russell Dam. It was desolate – not another boat around me – and turned out to be an awesome day.”
Wood says that he caught nearly all of his keepers on a ¾-ounce Strike King Red Eye Shad (Chartreuse Sexy-Shad) but added one on a Jackall Squad Minnow.
“I was fishing a point that had a good hard bottom and some scattered grass,” Wood says. “The wind had blown a big school of shad up shallow onto it, and everything that I weighed in came off of that point. I caught around 15 bass throughout the day, and a dozen of them came off of that one spot.”
Wood reports that he did catch a couple of spotted bass Saturday, but his limit that he brought to the weigh-in stage consisted entirely of largemouth.
“The spot the fish were set up on was not big – about as big as the deck of a boat. You had to be pretty precise with your casts.”
Top 10 boaters
1st: Adam Wood, Springfield, Ga., five bass, 21-3, $4,550
2nd: T.N. Thomas, Lincolnton, Ga., five bass, 18-2, $2,790
3rd: Wesley Sandifer, Chapin, S.C., five bass, 15-9, $1,451
4th: Greg Glouse, Liberty, S.C., five bass, 15-2, $1,115
5th: Jonathan Foster, Maiden, N.C., five bass, 15-0, $870
6th: Joey Sabbagha, Prosperity, S.C., five bass, 14-11, $1,098
7th: Justin Hadden, Lexington, S.C., five bass, 14-4, $725
8th: Ross Burns, Columbia, S.C., five bass, 13-8, $653
9th: Jeffrey Borne, Gilbert, S.C., five bass, 13-4, $580
10th: Barry Thames, Barnwell, S.C., five bass, 12-11, $508
Thomas caught a bass weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – to claim the day’s Boater Big Bass award of $615.
Miller wins on co-angler side
Michael Miller of Greenville, South Carolina, won the Co-angler Division Saturday after catching a five-bass limit weighing 14 pounds, 11 ounces. Miller earned $2,682 for his victory.
Top 10 co-anglers
1st: Michael Miller, Greenville, S.C., five bass, 14-11, $2,682
2nd: Brandon Lawson, Union, S.C., five bass, 12-13, $1,138
3rd: Dalton Dawdy, Chapin, S.C., five bass, 11-6, $726
4th: Kevin Henderson, Honea Path, S.C., five bass, 10-11, $507
5th: Bobby Henderson, Charlotte, N.C., five bass, 10-4, $435
6th: James Akins, Cumming, Ga., five bass, 9-9, $399
7th: Jamie Thames, Fairfax, S.C., five bass, 9-8, $363
8th: Rodney Tapp, North Augusta, S.C., five bass, 9-5, $326
9th: Trevor Sharrett, Chesnee, S.C., five bass, 8-13, $290
10th: Brennan Gunther, Mount Pleasant, S.C., five bass, 8-9, $254
The top 45 boaters and co-anglers in the region based on point standings, along with the five winners in each qualifying event, will be entered in the Oct. 18-20 BFL Regional Championship on Lake Norman in Huntersville, North Carolina. Boaters will compete for a top award of a Ranger Z518C with a 200-horsepower Evinrude outboard and $20,000, while co-anglers will fish for a new Ranger Z518C with a 200-horsepower Evinrude outboard.